Garden At Rest

Winter is upon us and it's time for me to put my garden to rest.  There weren't very many vegetables left out there so I decided to pick them all, turn off the sprinkler system and mulch all the beds for the season.  We are expecting three to four days of frigid temperatures and what's left out there will freeze and I'll lose it anyway. 

 

I wanted to introduce the puppies to the garden but still maintain control over them and their activities because the central theme of their training is I control everything.  So I brought their beds outside, tethered the pups to the outside of the garden fence, put a bowl of water between them and gave each of them a brand new pig snout to chew on.  They were pretty happy!

 Laci

 Going to town on the pig snout!

 Gretchen having a good time too!

 From inside the garden fence

Once I got the pups settled, I went to work.  I picked all the carrots.  To my surprise, there were still quite a few out there.  At least enough for one more meal.  They weren't very big, but baby carrots are quite sweet and yummy!

Next, I picked all the beets.  Again, these were tiny but roasted baby beets are one of my favorite side dishes.  I have a salad of Endive and Roasted Baby Beet with Gorgonzola Cheese planned for dinner one night this week.  Can't wait for that! 

I picked the last of the cabbage a few weeks ago so I pulled all the stems and threw some of the cabbage leaves over the fence to the deer and some went in the compost bin. 

There is only one small broccoli plant left in the garden that is still growing, but there were lots of little shoots coming off the six spent stalks.  So I picked all of those and it actually equaled quite a good bunch of baby broccoli florets . 

I had two Brussels sprouts plants left and again, the sprouts were small, but there was a good bunch once I picked them all.

I had a large bale of very decomposed hay left over from 2009's Christmas decorations, so I used that to mulch all the beds.  I'm hoping this hay cover will keep the soil somewhat moist and encourage lots of earth worms to grow.  Actually, I did see many earth worms as I was pulling plants and turning soil over.  That's always a very good thing. 

So I spread all the hay evenly over the beds and I had just enough to do all six garden beds. 

I had one head of broccoli left out there that was still growing and it has a little head beginning to form.  Since I hate to pull plants that are still growing and have a chance to produce, I left that one there and just mulched it really well.  Either it will survive the coming cold weather or it won't.  But I wanted to give it its best shot.  And I'll let Mother Nature decide that one. 

I feel the same way about my green onions.  They got a late start due to lack of sunshine but have begun to sprout.  So I mulched them really well and we'll just see what happens.

At the end of the day, I had a pretty good last haul of vegetables from my garden.  I'm very happy that I was able to pull all this before the freezing temperatures hit us.  There's at least four good meals sitting here and for me, that is what it's all about.

After a very long hard (but wonderful) day in the garden, reflecting on how my fall/winter garden produced for me this year, I'm pretty content.  We had many good meals shared with family and good friends and the deer that live outside my fence line ate pretty well too :-}  Life is good.